tmeasday

Does anyone know if/when heroku will support 3.1?

I've thought about this idea many times, and one idea I have had that I haven't seen verbling talk about---perhaps it doesn't make sense yet with only English + Spanish---is to run on a credit system rather than matching you up with an 'opposite'.

So, if I want to learn spanish, rather than trying to find me a spanish-speaker wanting to learn english for a 50-50 conversation, it just matches me up with a spanish-speaker wanting to learn _anything_, and I burn credit talking to them. Later I can earn credit by speaking to a _anything_-speaker wanting to learn english.

If you think through that system lots of cool ideas come out, especially if you attach a monetary value to the credit---like people only earning credit and cashing it out (tutors), or people only spending it, and injecting cash into the system (impatient/rich people).

Anyway, Verbling guys, you may have already thought of this, but if not, I've been thinking about it for quite a while, hit me up if you want to chat more about it.

Doesn't work for me either. What do you guys think about the collage layout though? I'm interested, as it's very similar to what we are trying to achieve at bindle: http://www.bindle.me/bindles/2

Sometimes. I think the simple answer to that is 'it depends on the problem'.

Yeah, fair enough. Caffeine does tend to get off relatively easily, although I would argue there is good reason for that, when you compare it to alcohol and nicotine for instance...

I've had a lot of success at slowly phasing sugar out. I spent a while consciously trying to put less into my coffees (it was a struggle sometimes), and now I drink it without suger.

Likewise I mix my on soft-drinks from cordial + soda water (seltzer) and i've scaled it back to the point where I often prefer the water plain.

The great thing about it is I use the sugar as a hit for its own sake now if I'm feeling tired/whatever. It doesn't last long, but it can be a great way to get yourself going.

Really, that's interesting. Maybe I need to give it another try.

I guess I am saying the downside of not having regular coffee (just that) outweighs the upside, which is the occasional use for an energy boost.

You switch out the first benefit for tea, I switch out the second for usually either sugar or exercise.

Really? Meth is similar or safer in it's effects?

I'm not sure. If I have too many coffees I become paranoid and shaky. I don't remember that happening early on when I was developing my addiction.

Sure, you could use coffee strategically. But what do you have to give up to do it? [Decaf isn't really an option, whatever the author says at the end of the post].

I think there'd have to be a serious health negative to maintaining my coffee addiction before I feel it'd be worth skipping my morning latte.

Oh, and a sugar hit can have a very similar effect in my opinion.

Our beta is built on a reservation system. Here’s a link [ http://www.bindle.me/users/sign_up?invitation_code=b63843991... ] to 100 spots for the HN community.

Show HNers:

Bindle is a show & tell for gear. We want gear lovers to benefit from the product discoveries of people who share the same sensibilities and purchases[1].

We’ve created Bindle to help people find the right gear. We believe that online product recommendation is more meaningful with context. One of the best ways to add context and represent yourself as a discerning consumer is past buying decisions.

After working remotely over the past few months we’re keen to release an initial product. So far, we’ve focused on crafting the experience around listing a collection of gear (a Bindle) in the easiest and most visually appealing way possible. We envisage people using it to list the gear they use in their activities or hobbies[2].

The goal at this point is to move towards discovery; enabling people to identify others who not only share their interests, but their choices. We believe there is immense value in the opinions of those who share your sensibilities---which far outweighs those of a random reviewer on a product’s website.

We’d love to hear what fellow HNers think, and specifically: - How do you think we can solve the cold start problem in this case? - What techniques can we use to make users come back?

[1] You can read more about the ideas that lead to Bindle in this blog post [ http://blog.bindle.me/post/7646364661/why-bindle ]. [2] Here are some sample bindles that we’ve created about some of our interests [ http://bindle.me/bindles/2 http://bindle.me/bindles/3 http://bindle.me/bindles/5 http://bindle.me/bindles/8 ].

Agreed. On both counts.

However obviously it's good PR, and we all appreciate the Mea Cupla from Heroku, the fact is, they are proposing to migrate to a situation where they are still completely reliant on AWS for their hosting.

I'm just not sure you can really say "We don’t want to ever put our customers through something like this again and we’re working as hard as we can on making sure that we won’t ever have to.", when at the end of the day, you are again relying on a company that has failed you in the past.

Not trying to attack Amazon or Heroku, I'm honestly intrigued by this issue; not to mention the fact that we are facing the exact same decision at work.

Is this reasonable? I'm sure a lot of amazon hosted companies are thinking similar thoughts.

But being on multiple Availability Zones was supposed to be bulletproof (according to Amazon). Now that we know that wasn't the case, is being hosted on multiple regions going to provide the necessary level of protection?

Is it an over-reaction to say that relying completely on Amazon could now be seen as irresponsible to your users, given the magnitude of this event?

Don't disagree with your basic point, but your numbers are a little off I think.

Here in Australia (http://www.icyte.com/saved/store.apple.com/320295) the iPhone is AU$859 - $999 (currently US$785-US$913). I believe in other countries it may be cheaper still...